The heart-wrenching image of a toddler crying as her mother is being patted down by a Border Patrol agent had become a symbol of family separation by the Trump Administration. The father of the child now says the girl was not separated from her mother. Susana Victoria Perez has more.
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Time magazine and the AP misled the public on Donald Trump's immigration policies. We need strong news media in our present moment, not fumbles like this.

Corrections & clarifications: This column has been updated to clarify that the error was not in Time's cover story, but in a separate online story published earlier.

Two recent news media fumbles illustrate nicely the present divide between mainstream journalism’s ambitions and its chronically blundering execution. There is a reason that American trust of the news is at such historic lows. There are things journalists can do to rectify this, if we care to.

The first fumble came from Time magazine, which published a cover story examining President Donald Trump’s controversial border separation policy. The photo-shopped cover of that issue features an immigrant toddler bawling as Trump serenely looks down upon her. “Welcome to America,” the caption reads — the obvious implication being that the immigrant girl had been torn from her parents at the behest of Trump’s policy. Indeed, an earlier online story about the photo initially stated that the girl had been “carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents.”

But she wasn’t. It didn’t happen. The heavy insinuation on Time’s cover, along with the explicit account in the story itself, turned out to be false. The girl’s father confirmed that she was never taken from her mother. Time corrected the story, stating that rather than being carted off by border agents, “her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.”

Time exploited a little girl's tears

It is bad enough that the magazine outright reported on an event that didn’t actually happen. But Time’s cover adds another layer of media malpractice to the whole thing. In effect, the magazine is exploiting the tears of a little girl in order to drive home a political point; it is tricking readers into thinking a photograph is depicting something that objectively it is not.

In other contexts, this tactic would have been roundly condemned. By way of example, several years ago, when pro-life activist David Daleiden used some stock footage of a stillborn baby to illustrate an abortion worker’s claims, the news media had a feeding frenzy over it. The Washington Post, CNN, ThinkProgress and other outlets were quick to point it out. Nobody likes to be fooled.

Not to be outdone, The Associated Press last week published a bombshell report on a civil rights lawsuit brought by numerous immigrant children. They were allegedly held at a detention center in Virginia and subjected to brutal abuse, including being “beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.”

The allegations are horrifying. What was surprising, however, was the way the article framed them. In the original report, which has since been amended online, readers had to make it through more than 20 paragraphs before learning that most of the alleged abuse took place under the Obama administration.

Tell the truth. Don't lie. Don't trick.

Not only did the article deeply bury the context of the allegations, it also strongly implied that the abuse was taking place solely under the Trump administration. One paragraph reads: “Many of the children were sent (to the detention facility) after U.S. immigration authorities accused them of belonging to violent gangs, including MS-13. President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited gang activity as justification for his crackdown on illegal immigration.” Such framing makes it seem as if the alleged abuse was a direct consequence of Trump’s rhetoric, when that simply wasn’t the case.

The revised article makes it clear that much of the abuse dates from the Obama era. But the clarification came after the article had already been shared thousands upon thousands of times on social media. When stories like this drop, they spread across the globe within a matter of minutes — no matter if the story itself is misleading or unfair.

The news media need to do better than this. Our present political moment needs a strong and professional journalism industry, not one that is interested in cheap, dishonest tactics meant to smear the president. This is particularly crucial when one remembers that Trump himself has signaled a willingness to try and muzzle journalists: On the campaign trail, he expressed a desire to use libel laws to shut up anyone who criticizes him. Journalism that regularly shreds its own credibility — with Trump voters, for one, but also with the larger body politic — is ill-suited to take on that kind of threat.

Be honest. Tell the truth. Don’t lie. Don’t trick. These are rules every journalist should follow. We should not think we have the luxury of slapdash journalism. It is bad for the industry and ultimately bad for the country.